Prajnesh Gunneswaran thread

[vparam]

Thanks Sameer. That's a shame. He could have been a top 4 seed in qualifying and favored to make the main draw. The money for losing in the 1st round in Dubai is nearly 3 times the amount for winning the challenger in Bangkok. Now that he is top 100 player, hope he focuses on these big money opportunities going forward.

[RohitG]

2 close semi losses for Prajnesh in Chennai and Bangkok-2 and a R32 exit in Bangkok-1, net earning of ~50 points. This will safely guarantee him a FO spot. To make Wimbledon cut he'll need to earn ~90 points till the entry deadline to offset the falling points in April. He has entered the Indian Wells qualifiers where RamK too will be in action.

[sameerph]

Prajnesh is at a new career high of #94 this week. Next up Indian Wells qualies next week.

[sameerph]

With his excellent run at Indian Wells , Prajnesh moves to a new career high of #84. He moves ahead of Jagjit Singh and Sasi Menon and is now #7 Indian in all time open era ranking. He is just 1 spot behind Yuki. A couple of wins a Miami can take him ahead of Yuki in next ranking update.

[sameerph]

So, Prajnesh is at a new career high of #81 this week and moves ahead of Yuki to be #6 in the open era career best rankings behind Vijay/Anand Amritraj, Ramesh Krishnan, Somdev and Leander. What a great company to have.

This is the latest article on his future plans-

Focus is on French Open, says India’s No. 1 Prajnesh

It does look like he wants to only play on clay now till French open. So, he will mostly pull out of Taipei challenger next week, will try to defend his Anning Challenger title and then go to Europe for clay season. He will need to earn at least some 25-30 points at Anning or first couple of weeks of European clay season to make sure he stays in or close to top 100 after his last year's Anning title points drop off and makes the cut for Wimbledon main draw.

[PKBasu]

It's wonderful to be able to plan the entire clay season, with a full roster of ATP tournaments. He shouldn't put too much pressure on himself in Anning. It's much more important to focus on playing the ATP tournaments now.

[Prashant]

It's wonderful to see one of our guys actually *plan* a course of action. After years of being bewildered by everything Yuki and some of our other worthies do, this is welcome.

[RohitG]

Yes he did comment on insta that his next tournament is at Anning, so he will in all likelihood skip Taipei

[knarayen]

Great to see that he is actually planning tournaments based on main draw entries that he has already obtained. Hasn't happened in a long time - we all can wish him

Prof

[Dinesh]

Congrats to Prajnesh on another milestone, this time in his personal life - getting engaged to his girlfriend(?) earlier today (per his Instagram update).

[sameerph]

Congratulation to Prajnesh. And he moves ahead to a new career high of #80 in the ATP singles rankings.

He has 140 points to defend though in next 2 weeks. So, key couple of weeks for him. He needs to do well to stay within top 100. I guess if he does well in Anning next week ( at least final), he will skip Nanchang the week after. Else, he may have to play that week too to try to defend those points.

[sameerph]

As expected, Prajnesh moves to a new career high of #75 in the official ATP singles rankings as of today.

However, since he pulled out of Nanchang Challenger and loses his last year's Anning challenger title points this week, he will fall somewhere just outside 90 in the next week's rankings.

No points to defend in May till French open. So, a few wins on the pre-French open clay tournaments can take his ranking up again. As of now next tournament will be Munich ATP 250 next week, He is 9 out from main draw and is in the qualifying entry list where he should be one of the top 4 seeds based on his current ranking. Most probably Madrid masters qualies the week after that where he is 3 out from qualies draw.

[Omkara]

he can't play qualies as it falls on same week as he dropped off due to injury. If he gets direct entry, its a different story.

[sameerph]

No, qualies for Munich ATP over the weekend is considered tournament for next week.He withdraw from Nanchang AYP this week So, he will be able to play qualies there.

[RohitG]

I won't say secured but I think he has just made the USO cut too. Only just. Because a lot of players beyond #100 try to go deep in challengers just before the entry deadline and also some players get in with PRs.